But it’s Rudd’s diagnosis of what’s ailing the United Nations that is particularly notable. The rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, intensifying rivalries between the United States and Russia and China, and a fierce backlash against globalization are all challenging the “assumption of recent decades that the dynamics of greater global integration were somehow unstoppable,” he writes.

This is an urgent problem, Rudd argues in the report, because despite its many failings, the United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.” Among other things, he writes, the UN has helped avert another world war; played a role in drastically reducing the share of the global population living in extreme poverty; created a system of dispute-settlement institutions to counteract the “long and malignant history of territorial and trade disputes” sparking international conflict; staved off the “all-out proliferation of nuclear weapons” that looked so likely in the early 1960s; and provided humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations that, before the advent of the UN, were often “simply left to die.”

But recent years have brought worrying signs of weakness, according to Rudd. The UN wasn’t a participant in international talks to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, he points out, even though one of its institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was tasked with helping implement the resulting agreement. The UN has been similarly absent from efforts to address other major security challenges like the war in Ukraine and the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program. It sluggishly responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and has bungled the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. And it has failed to prevent mass atrocities and resolve chronic conflict in countries like South Sudan and Syria. The UN’s role in spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti through the unsanitary practices of its peacekeepers—a role the organization only recently acknowledged, after years of denials—has further tarnished the institution’s image.